


Familiar Strangers

by ProfessorFlimflam



Category: Holby City
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/F, Feels, I'm Sorry, Reunion, Suicide Attempt, Very Good Dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 02:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13401696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorFlimflam/pseuds/ProfessorFlimflam
Summary: It’s thirty years since Bernie Wolfe left for the Sudan, and thirty years since Serena Campbell disappeared from the face of the earth. Bernie has been running from her ghost all that time. Now she has been forced into retirement at last, it’s time to face her demons.





	Familiar Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for mention and description of attempted suicide.

It was the dog who sought her out.

Even in early March, the prom was busy - crowded, even - but the dog seemed to single her out straight away, slaloming through the holiday makers and locals out on their daily constitutionals. The first thing she was aware of was a warm muzzle nosing into her hand, a snuffling sound, a quiet whine, a dry tongue to her wrist.

A great shaggy thing, it was, but handsome. A noble head as high as her own hip, the great brown eyes searching her own with something akin to joy, the long tail whipping to and fro. She looked at those deep eyes, the long grey-blonde coat tangling in the sea breeze, and for a crazy moment she wondered if this was how death had come to her: in her own image but on four paws. It was clear that the dog, overjoyed to have found this familiar stranger, could barely refrain from jumping up and putting those great paws to her shoulders, but it was clearly a well-bred beast, and with a great effort of will, it lowered itself to its haunches with a deep “ _whuff_ ,” and without breaking eye contact for a moment, raised a foreleg, and offered one heavy paw for her to shake.

Utterly charmed, Bernie eased herself to one knee - a less graceful process than it had been thirty years ago - and took the dog’s paw in her own hand, grasping it firmly and respectfully, her other hand smoothing its brow, scratching behind a silky ear.

“Thank you,” she said gravely. “I’m very pleased to meet you. What’s your name, then?” But before she could reach for the tag at the dog’s collar, she heard a voice she would have recognised anywhere, even after all these years.

“Bernie! Bernie, come!”

Bernie froze, her fingers still lifting towards the collar, even as the dog swung its great head round to where the cry had come from. She had been right: death had come for her. For what else could it mean: this dog, that voice? Stronger and more assured than the last time she had heard it, but she could never mistake that best-beloved voice, and she rose to her feet to answer this final roll-call. She stood as tall now as she had all those years ago, her military bearing never leaving her, but her courage faltered, and she took a deep breath to ground herself before she turned to meet her fate.

“I’m so sorry, she doesn’t normally approach strangers, she knows better than that. I'm afraid she’s a bit daunting, great girl that she is, but she’s quite a softy, really. Come on, girl, heel!”

 _Not death, then_ , Bernie thought, her head reeling.

“Good girl, there you are. I’m sorry. I hope she didn’t frighten y- _oh_.”

For Bernie had turned towards that rich voice now, and she saw the familiar but strange figure before her now, the long scarlet coat - surely not the same one? - the short crop of thick hair, not silver now but snow-white, and those eyes - oh, those eyes, as deep and dark as her own, and as wide as her own must surely be now.

 _Serena_.

The silence stretched out between them until the dog could bear it no longer, and Bernie felt a soft mouth grasping her wrist through her heavy woollen coat, and the dog tugged until she stepped forward.

“Serena - is it really you?”

“Bernie, I - “

The dog looked from one woman to the other, whining softly. She slunk back to Serena and gave a sharp nudge to the back of her knees, propelling her forward, straight into Bernie’s arms.

“Oh, Bernie!” It was a gasp, a laugh, a cry, a sob, all in one breath, and it held thirty years of longing.

***

They sat in the beachfront café, sharing a pot of coffee. Out of habit, Serena had ordered a slice of cake, but it lay untouched on the plate.

“I come here most days,” she said. “The dog likes a good run along the beach, and I need a good warm up afterwards. Cake’s about my only vice these days - can you believe I haven’t drunk a drop since I left the vineyard?”

Bernie was mindlessly fussing with the dog’s ears. It lay heavily across both women’s feet, and Bernie was reminded of the time that Jason and Fletch had locked them into their office after she had returned from Kiev: it seemed as though the dog wasn’t going anywhere until they had resolved what lay between them.

“I don't know what to believe, Serena. I didn’t even know if you were alive or not - in fact, I was sure you weren’t. I couldn’t think how else to explain it - that glorious, wonderful, happy month we had in France, and then - nothing. I was supposed to be in the Sudan for six months, but when I didn’t hear from you, I was so worried. I could understand letters not getting through, but phone calls, texts, Skype… and when Jason said he hadn’t heard from you either, I knew something was badly wrong. I went back to the vineyard six weeks after I’d left you there, and you’d gone. No-one could tell me anything other than that one morning you just didn’t show up, and that your cottage had been cleared out overnight. You disappeared without a trace.”

The dog yawned widely and dropped her head onto her paws, and Bernie’s hands moved to the table, folding her napkin into ever smaller triangles.

“All your bills were paid, your accounts closed. You had put your house in order, and I knew what that meant.”

“Bernie…”

“No, Serena. You must have known that’s what people would think. What I would think. You disappeared from the face of the earth - and you made a bloody good job of it. Did you think I wouldn’t look for you? I spent _years_ looking for you. I was so nearly certain that you had taken your own life - but I couldn’t get beyond the note. You didn’t leave a note, and I thought you couldn’t be so cruel as to do something like that without leaving me some word. But you did.”

Serena looked at her fearlessly, her level gaze unwavering in the face of an accusation she knew she deserved.

“I left a note.”

Bernie shook her head. “There was no note. I would have found it. I looked everywhere - your cottage, the vineyard, the house in Holby, I went back to AAU - I even went to Elinor’s grave. I would have found a note.”

“I left a note. I wrote a letter - to you, of course to you - and I left it on the kitchen table in the cottage, very early that morning. Then I walked down through the vines - do you remember a brook at the foot of the slopes? If you follow it downstream it gets broader, deeper. I filled the pockets of my coat with stones - big ones, as big and heavy as I could find. Then I just - walked in. I walked into the water, and when I got to the middle, I let myself fall forward, and I waited for it all to go away.”

She took a sip of coffee, savouring it as she once would have savoured a glass of wine.

“That month we had - it was glorious, but it wasn’t real. No, no - I mean, it was real, but we couldn’t have sustained that. The grief was always going to be there, bursting through our happiness, poisoning everything. I would have destroyed you. Don’t you remember how I was before I left Holby? I hadn’t changed, not really. I had some better days, yes, but that bitterness, that emptiness - that was all there was of me, really. We had that golden month, and I saw what I’d lost, because I couldn’t believe in a whole future that looked like that, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t have it, and I couldn’t bear not to have it. So I walked into the river and let myself go.”

The dog raised its heavy head for a moment, its soulful eyes meeting hers for an instant before it resettled.

“And then I heard the most almighty splash, and everything was chaos - and I felt myself being dragged out of the water, and I just couldn’t care enough one way or the other to fight. I lay on the riverbank, just looking up through the green leaves into a clear blue sky. I saw a shadow, and all this blonde hair, and I swear to God, I thought it was you, Bernie, I thought you’d come back and pulled me out of the water - and then the biggest dog I’d ever seen was there, shaking water and hair and slobber all over me.”

Bernie looked down at the dog, a frown on her face.

“No, Bernie, not this dog, obviously. She’s the sixth of her line. Or is she the seventh? I lose track. Same bloodline, though. God knows where she came from, that dog, but she was determined that I was going to stay alive. She wouldn’t leave my side, and when I eventually picked myself up and trudged back up to the cottage, she came with me, nudging my hand every so often. I dried myself off, found something for the dog to eat, and then I picked up the letter, because it wasn’t true any more. I didn’t know then, what I was going to do. You were right, I’d put my house in order, and I didn’t feel I could stay, so I - well, I just started walking. I’d left some cash for the crew at the vineyard - quite a lot, actually - and I had the sense to take it back before they found it. I retrieved some clothes from the charity box I’d left them in - not much, just what I could easily carry, like some mad old bag lady, and then I just put one foot in front of the other until I was too tired to go on.”

Bernie remained silent, not knowing how to respond to Serena’s tale, not knowing how to respond to the very fact of her.

“I walked for days, the dog at my side all that time. You know how rural it was there, and it wasn’t difficult to find places to sleep, somewhere to eat. People are kind, on the whole. I even slept in a barn one or two nights - do you remember telling a patient once that barns were good? Anyway, after a few days, I realised where I was walking to. I found myself heading towards the town my grandmother was born in - I was nowhere near it, but I was heading towards it like a migrating bird. And once I knew where I was going, I found I could start making more rational decisions. I took a train - they took some convincing to let the dog on - and then there I was again, where I’d spent so much of my childhood. It hadn’t changed at all, and there were people there who remembered me, but didn’t know me at all, didn’t know what had happened, and there was a sort of peace in that.”

She reached down and scratched the dog’s hindquarters roughly. It shivered in delight, the heavy tail thumping the floor lazily.

“I hadn’t been there long when I realised the dog was carrying pups. Have you any idea how much money people will pay for a wolfhound puppy? After a while I got a bit of a name for myself as a dog breeder - quite undeserved, I have to say - after all, it was the dog that did all the work - but that’s who I became. The English woman with the big dogs. I never practiced medicine again, but I was a damn good vet, for all that I wasn’t qualified. I’ve kept a bitch from every litter, and I’d be so lost without her. I was lost, before.”

Beseeching eyes met Bernie’s, hoping against all hope for some sort of understanding, forgiveness, even.

Bernie pushed her coffee cup away from her.

“Are you too tired to walk further? I need to move.”

***

“What’s brought you to Cornwall?”

Serena broke the long silence at last. The wind whipped her words away, but Bernie heard her.

“Retirement - finally. I had to retire from the Army at sixty of course, but I’ve only just stopped working - I was with Médicin sans Frontières for a while. Then various VSO projects - mostly in refugee camps. All too much call for trauma specialists still, sadly. When I got to eighty, even they wouldn’t have me any more, even in an advisory capacity. It’s infuriating, I could work until I drop dead if they’d let me. Which I suppose is what they’re worried about. Cameron’s glad to have me back on home soil, I think - he and Morven moved down here when they retired, and their kids come down fairly frequently. That’s the upside to retirement, I suppose - I think I’m finally ready to be a family woman.”

“You’ve kept yourself busy, Colonel. Oh, don’t look surprised. I may not have kept my scalpel sharp, but I’ve followed your progress. Is there anywhere in the world you haven’t been in the last thirty years? Surely you’ve got nothing left to run from any more?”

Bernie leaned against the sea wall and gazed out to the rocks. She sighed and turned sorrowful eyes to Serena.

“I’ve spent thirty years running from all the places you weren’t.”

Serena felt the wind cut through her coat, felt the world fall away from her as Bernie’s words found her heart.

“All this time… Bernie, I wanted you to forget me. I wanted… I wanted to leave no trace in the world, no scars.”

Bernie turned to her incredulously. “How could I forget you? How could someone as loved as you leave no trace? I tried to find a place where your absence didn’t hurt, but there’s no such place.”

And finally the tears came.

***

Serena had lit a fire in the grate, and to Bernie’s indignation she had tucked a fleecy tartan rug around her knees while she went to put the kettle on. The dog sat next to her, its heavy head on her lap, and she buried her fingers in the scruff of its neck, as much to keep herself from dissociating as to pet the faithful hound. As she tangled her fingers in the thick hair, she caught the broad leather collar, and twisted it round to see the tag at the dog’s throat.

“Serena?”

“Just a moment - I’ll be through in a jiffy.”

But Bernie was done waiting now.

“You have a wolfhound.”

“I know, darling, she’s hard to miss.”

“You have a wolfhound called Bernie.”

“Ah. Yes. Yes, I do. Berenice, actually.”

“You have a wolfhound called Bernie, and she’s wearing my dog tags.”

Serena was in the doorway now, two steaming mugs on a tray. She looked warily at Bernie, unable to read her expression in the dim light.

“I didn’t keep much when I left the vineyard. Just the essentials.”

“And these were essential?” Bernie accepted the mug of hot chocolate gratefully.

Serena sat across from her in the other armchair, her fingers worrying at her pendant in an achingly familiar gesture.

“Leaving you was the hardest thing. I left for your sake, but I couldn’t let you go. I told you, when that first good dog pulled me from the water, I thought at first it was you. She was so strong, so loyal. I thought it might have been you for quite a long time, actually, until I came back to something resembling my senses. But the name stuck with her afterwards, and since then the fairest bitch from every litter has been Berenice. I think she’ll be the last, though.”

“Yes, she will,” Bernie said forcefully. There was a clatter from the kitchen, and a smokey grey cat slunk in, buffing its head against Serena’s leg in passing, before jumping neatly onto the sofa next to Bernie, nosing at her curiously before settling down alongside her, purring heavily. Bernie raised an eyebrow at Serena.

“Dare I ask?”

“Oh, I just call her ‘cat,’ mostly,” she breezed, but there was a suspicious flush on her cheek.

“Serena…”

“She’s called Zelda. Do you have any pets yourself?” Serena hurriedly tried to reroute the conversation, but it was too late.

“Serena Wendy Campbell. Are you seriously telling me you have a dog called Berenice and a cat called Griselda?”

Serena laughed nervously. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Well,” Bernie mused, “At least I know I’m not the only sentimental old fool in the room.”

“You? What do you mean?”

Bernie drew the rug a little closer around her knees as best she could without disturbing either of her namesakes, and she looked keenly at Serena before turning her gaze to the fire. It had taken hold well - Serena had a knack for building a fire, borne of those long cold winters in the little house in France, once her grandmother’s. The flames licked around the bed of coals and caught the underside of the logs piled on top.

“I’m not saying this to hurt you, Serena, please believe that. But I gave up hope of finding you a long time ago. I’d certainly given up hope of finding you alive. That’s what I meant about all the places you weren’t. I couldn’t settle anywhere, because I knew I would never find you anywhere. It was killing me. Cameron made me go on a retreat last year, a mindfulness thing. Do you remember when that was all the rage? Said I needed to make some sort of peace with your ghost before I died (which, by the way, I have no intention of doing any time soon). So off I went, good soldier that I am, to a little place in the Brecons, and I spent a week just _not running_. God, it was awful. But it was good. Helpful. I talked to you a lot. Said all the things I’d been wanting to say for thirty years. Told you how much I hated you for what you’d done. Told you how much I loved you anyway. Told you I wouldn’t run from your absence any more. Told you I’d found a measure of serenity.”

She pushed the sleeve of her jumper up to her elbow, and turned the inside of her arm towards Serena. The tattoo was old enough to have healed, but fresh enough that the edges were crisp and sharp, and even in the firelight, Serena could make out the elegant script that ran from wrist to elbow.

 _Serenity_.

It was Serena’s eyes now that were full of tears. “This was for me?”

Bernie smiled, a smile that had always been for Serena alone. “Well, I wasn’t going to have a woman’s name on my skin - I’ve got a bit of class, you know. Caused quite the commotion in the tattoo parlour - don't think they get many eighty year old women wanting to get inked in Abergavenny. But yes, it’s for you. I’ve carried you with me all these years, I thought you might as well take up permanent residence.”

Serena stood abruptly. “I’ve got something else of yours. Something you should have, I mean.” She turned away, leafing through a drawer in the bureau. She stepped closer to Bernie, an envelope in her hand. It was old, a little crumpled and worn around the edges, but it was unopened. In a hand firmer than Serena could now muster, Bernie’s name was neatly printed across the front, a long-forgotten address in the Sudan beneath it.

“I told you there was a note. I didn’t know what to do with it, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to throw it away - it seemed... important. It was always meant for you - I think you should read it now, if you want to. It might help make sense of where I was back then, and why I made some of the decisions I did.”

Bernie took it from her, but didn’t take her eyes from Serena’s for a heartbeat. Her finger traced the edges of the envelope, along, across; along, across.

“You know,” Serena continued, “Elinor would be in her early fifties now. The same age we were when we met. When she died, I raged that she’d had her whole life ahead of her, but looking back, I can see that even at fifty something, you and I had a life ahead of us, too - and I threw that away as surely as Elinor’s life was wasted. I can’t ask you to forgive me, but if you could understand a little…”

The fire crackled, and a log snapped and settled as Bernie smiled kindly at Serena.

“A long time ago I knew someone who promised to take grudges to the grave. She made an exception for me when I screwed up. I say we leave the past in the past and make what we can of the future we have left, hmm?”

She pushed the blanket from her knees, disturbing the dog. Pushing herself up with one hand on the arm of the sofa, she stood and stepped to the fireplace. She looked down at the envelope, at her own name in that well-remembered hand. She glanced briefly at Serena who nodded once, her hand at her throat, and she dropped the letter into the fire, watching as it caught and curled in the flames. As it blackened and collapsed into ash, she turned towards Serena, as close to her now as she had been in their office that day she came back from Kiev. She lifted a hand to Serena’s white hair, shorter now than she had ever seen it.

“You look like Judi Dench.”

Serena’s hand traced Bernie’s cheekbone, her neck.

“You look like Bernie Wolfe.”

The years fell away along with the hurt, the resentment, the guilt. They were fifty again, in the first flush of their great love. Their kiss was tender, but it still held all the passion that they had kept for each other over the years, and Bernie knew that she would never need to run again.

***

Griselda stretched and curled up in the warm spot Bernie had left behind. Berenice huffed a great sigh and dropped her head to her paws, looking up at the two women through her shaggy eyebrows. She thought perhaps there might be a bit of steak coming her way soon.


End file.
